Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, March 6, 2000 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Joe Paradiso

ABSTRACT -- Computers are becoming steadily more powerful, yet the vast majority of user interfaces remain dominated by the canonical keyboard and mouse.  Drops in hardware costs coupled with increases in processing capability have encouraged many PCs to be adorned with microphones and video cameras, but this trend will explode when computation and communication diffuse further from the standard desktop computer niche, and smart sensors exploiting many different channels of perception permeate into objects scattered throughout intelligent, responsive environments.  This talk will describe work at the MIT Media Laboratory on the development of new user interface devices for interactive spaces and multimodal, dexterous expression.  Current and evolving projects will be described that detect user gesture by exploiting technologies such as electric field sensing, ultra low-cost radar, sonar, piezoelectric materials, optical trackers, and passive wireless tags.  Many novel applications of these technologies will be demonstrated, including new musical instruments, interactive musical/graphical spaces, smart rooms, smart furniture, and sensing/communication in wearable computer systems.

SPEAKER -- Joseph Paradiso is a principal research scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directs the Responsive Environments Group, which explores the development and application of new sensor technologies for human-computer interfaces and intelligent spaces.  As the Technology Director for the Things That Think Consortium --  a group of Media Lab researchers and industrial sponsors examining the extreme future of embedded computation and sensing -- he identifies and pursues new areas of technical development for injection into devices and projects.  Joseph received a B.S. in electrical engineering and physics summa cum laude from Tufts University in 1977, and in 1981 completed a Ph.D. in physics from MIT as a C.T. Compton Fellow in the Nobel Prize-winning group headed by Samuel C.C. Ting at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science.  Before joining the Media Lab, he worked at ETH in Zurich and the Draper Laboratory in Cambridge on various projects encompassing high-energy physics detectors, spacecraft control systems, and underwater sonar.  In addition to his technical career, Joseph has been designing electronic music synthesizers and composing electronic music since 1975, and has long been active in the avant-garde music scene as a producer of electronic music programs for non-commercial radio.  He has built (and still uses) one of the world's largest modular synthesizers, and has designed MIDI systems for internationally-known musicians such as Pat Metheney and Lyle Mays.